Monday, May 9, 2011

Horny Men, updated

As stated in an earlier post, one of the explicitly described "masker" groups in The Rover is what we've come to call The Horny Men -- a pair of horned cuckolds with some curiously ambiguous dialogue surrounding them. I spent a lot of time wondering just what kind of horns the masks should have. While I was in bed, post-tonsillectomy, I did some sketching.

A combination of the bottom-middle and bottom-right were the winners.

Next was the question of how I was even going to make the horns. Luckily for me, the Costume Goddesses, Tric & Mary Jo, were willing to help me. They introduced me to a material called Wonderflex, which is an extruded thermoplastic composite sheet. The Wonderflex comes in sheets, you cut it into shapes, dip it into hot water, and then shape the plastic in any configuration you want! The Wonderflex then hardens in that shape. It is indeed wonderful.

See the sheet of Wonderflex in the bowl?

I used a combination of Goop and hot glue to connect the hardened horns to the Horny Men masks, which were made with black neoprene.

Clay, raw neoprene, base coat, and highlight/shadowed.

In addition, I put ribbons around the base of the horns to cover up the nasty, Goop-y seams.

I'd gone through so much thought about what kind of horns to do, but the matter really came down to how to make the horns, and how long I had to make them. Of course, I waited 'til nearly the last week to finish the horns, so it was a matter of getting it done and getting it done quickly. Thankfully, the Wonderflex worked beautifully.

Unfortunately, the paint did not. The two Horny Men looked like martians with the bright green. (I'd been trying to compliment the olive green in the costumes.) Again, the Costume Goddesses and Liz, Our Fearless Director, had the answer: a mat wash. Ellie had a bottle of mat medium that I mixed with red paint and covered the entire masks. While the masks a splotchy red-green up-close, but onstage they look brownish-orange.

Even better than the masks to convey the sexuality of these characters is, of course, the codpiece.